| Reviews / Comptes Rendus | Labour/Le Travail, 56

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Deborah Foster and Peter Scott, eds., Trade Unions in Europe: Meeting the Challenge (Brussels: P.I.E.-Peter Lang 2003)

THE CHALLENGES European trade unions face are, by now, well documented. Bargaining decentralization, market liberalization, the growing dominance of multinational firms, the shift of employment from manufacturing to services, and the expansion of non-standard employment have all left their mark on a beleaguered and shrinking labour movement. At the same time that national unions are losing traditional forms of bargaining power and political influence, they face a new set of challenges as they seek to build institutions that will support collective representation in an increasingly integrated Europe. It is not quite so easy to find comparative analyses of how unions are responding to these challenges. Deborah Foster and Peter Scott's edited collection Trade Unions in Europe: Meeting the Challenge has an optimistic title without presenting much new evidence that would warrant such optimism. Nonetheless, its chapters provide a good road map of the various arenas in which unions are seeking to expand their role and engage in social dialogue, suggesting that while European labour may not yet be successfully overcoming the challenges of integration, they are at least beginning to face up to them.

The first two essays ask how unions are restructuring their organizations to more effectively influence policy-making at the European level. Waddington and Hoffman begin by analyzing union efforts to engage in structural and policy reform. To this end, they summarize recent shifts in union strategy, including efforts to recruit and retain members, union mergers, and new forms of international engagement. They are particularly concerned with the current lack of "articulation between the different levels of trade union activity," or strategies that link European, national, and workplace activities. (60) Jane Pilliger offers a somewhat more optimistic assessment in her discussion of coordinated union efforts to address gender inequality. She analyses the success of recent campaigns by the European Federation of Public Service Unions [EPSU] to improve the representation of women in decision-making positions in the EPSU and its affiliate national unions, and documents successes in both raising awareness of gender issues and increasing equal opportunity provisions in collective bargaining. While women are still underrepresented in decision-making positions, she argues that these efforts at the EU level are moving national unions toward greater acceptance of gender mainstreaming.

The remaining chapters provide detailed accounts of specific EU initiatives, analysing the influence of the EU "as an actor" on national unions. Pochet focuses on recent developments in European social dialogue, asking how debates over subsidiarity and the open method of coordination [OMC] have "created a specific space and roles for the social actors." (89) He shows that each has a different logic, and thus as the debate shifts from subsidiarity (which conceives of a federal Europe with centralized actors) to the OMC (which is based on multi-level governance with coordinated actors), unions are forced to change their strategies. Instead of relying on European-level framework agreements, unions, employers, and policy-makers must increasingly interact on different levels to "Europeanize" national and regional policies. Keller asks more speculatively whether social partners will be able to establish a more encompassing system of social policy within this new framework. He finds that new structures are developing unevenly due to weak institutional supports, diverging interests, and the progressive shift from substantial to procedural regulation, making it unlikely that social dialogue will develop into a more coordinated form of European neo-corporatism.

The final contributions focus on two European institutions that have received a great deal of press in recent years: European works councils [EWCs] and the European Monetary Union [EMU]. Knudsen analyses the relationship between EWCs and trade unions, arguing that disagreements among national unions have limited the EWCs' success. He finds that the new EWCs play a somewhat contradictory role, as they are dominated by unions and yet primarily used to extend regional or national bargaining rather than to build more enduring forms of solidarity. Foster and Scott conclude with an analysis of how the EMU's policies have created new challenges for public sector unions. The EMU has become a central actor in the politics of recent cutbacks in national welfare state provision and public sector employment as it pressures national governments to reduce expenditures. The authors document different union strategies to intervene, including social pacts that seek to meet the convergence criteria and union resistance to austerity measures — each of which has had varying success. They argue that this example raises broader concerns with how economic governance will be managed in an increasingly integrated Europe, given multiple and often conflicting interests in reform.

The chapters in Trade Unions in Europe together provide a thorough and well-researched contribution to the literature on union responses to European integration. The book is strongest in documenting the various obstacles this process has thrown in the path of trade unions still oriented to the nation-state, providing the reader with a comprehensive historical and technical background on a wide range of related topics. The authors convincingly demonstrate their expertise in the often complex relationships between national and European-level policies and institutions. The scope of topics covered is impressive, bringing together much descriptive material in a relatively slim volume.

One theme that runs through the book is the growing need for trade unions to develop more integrated strategies that connect their activities at the workplace, national, and European levels. As a catalogue of what unions are trying to do in this regard, it is an excellent reference. However, given the scope of material presented, there is a notable lack of comparative analysis or theoretical synthesis. The authors often combine general and sometimes vague prognoses of what unions should be doing (i.e., improving coordination between different levels of union activity) with very detailed descriptions of strategies and challenges at these different levels, without effectively connecting the two. The distinct struggles of national unions over social policy outcomes fall into the background amidst the sheer volume of material covered, making it difficult to draw clear conclusions about which strategies have been more or less effective.

These minor criticisms aside, Foster and Scott have brought together a unique group of essays addressing a range of issues that are clearly of growing concern to European trade unions. Raising more questions than can be easily answered seems to be part of the justification for this volume, and in this regard it provides an effective jumping off point for future analysis. Trade Unions and Europe should be valuable reading for both academics and practitioners concerned with the challenges unions face in an increasingly integrated Europe.


Virginia Doellgast Cornell University

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